Cashflows, the platform that makes it easy for merchants to accept payments, today launches Fast Onboarding. The new service reduces the time it takes for a merchant to be onboarded, whether directly or via a partner, making the process as easy and streamlined as possible without cutting corners on regulatory compliance or compromising on KYC and AML.

Fast Onboarding eliminates the administrative burden for Cashflows’ customers and partners by making the entire process more robust. Combining human and artificial intelligence, the new service offers automated bank validation and self-populates data from official sources such as Companies House wherever possible – bringing in human intervention where needed.

The launch comes as research conducted by Cashflows reveals that merchants want a faster, more transparent onboarding process. Out of the 55% of merchants that have switched provider in the past, 40% experienced frustrations during the process. Businesses cited challenges such as needing to submit significant amounts of documentation (61%), having to share the same information multiple times (54%), and long approval times (23%).

Worryingly, of the businesses that had never switched providers, two in five (40%) referenced concerns over downtime, delays, and complexity as reasons for not doing so. In fact, 48% of businesses said switching providers took more than one week, whilst 6% of respondents claimed it took more than one month to begin transacting with their current provider.

To resolve this challenge, Cashflows has launched Fast Onboarding, which will enable 80% of applications to be approved within one business day, driving fast, consistent decisions on applications. The new service will provide greater clarity on applications and transparency into Cashflows processes. Using these features, partners have an enhanced ability to process leads at scale, enabling fast and sustainable business growth, and direct customers can begin taking payments faster.  

Cashflows partner, Wireless Terminal Solutions, was involved in the pilot scheme of the Fast Onboarding service. Matt Griffiths, Sales Manager, Wireless Terminal Solutions, comments: “Having the ability to track the different stages of customer applications in real-time has been very helpful for us to manage expectations. It’s great to see how quickly applications processed through Fast Onboarding, streamlining and adding even more transparency to the process.”

Hannah Fitzsimons, CEO, Cashflows, comments, “At Cashflows, we believe the merchant onboarding process shouldn’t be frustrating. It should be an easy step supporting the backbone of businesses: payments. That’s why we’ve been working hard to create Fast Onboarding to eliminate inefficient practices, increase consistency, and provide our partners with the capacity to scale rapidly – and our customers with the ability to accept payments faster. We’re giving our customers and partners valuable time back, while also allowing ourselves more time to focus on what matters: providing simple, smart ways to pay, wherever and however it suits merchants’ customers.”

Juni, the financial platform built for digital commerce, has today announced that Amazon sellers will now be able to seamlessly integrate their stores with the Juni platform. The integration enables businesses to make better financial decisions with unified insights into all their Amazon stores’ financial data in one, real-time overview. 

Juni gives e-commerce businesses complete visibility and control over their cash flow with a unified view of multi-currency business accounts, corporate virtual cards and flexible credit with unparalleled insights and analytics – all in one place. 

According to Statista, the UK has the most advanced e-commerce market in Europe generating revenue of £110 billion. Amazon is one of the major platforms that UK e-commerce businesses use to sell their products, with over 85,000 UK SMEs now selling on Amazon – up more than 25% year-on-year. 

With this integration, Amazon sellers can see data in the Juni platform including:

• Total gross and net sales volume
• Average order value across selected time frames
• Total number of orders made across selected time frames and stores
• First and returning customer transactions
• Best-selling products by the number of units, orders containing them, and sales amount

“It’s time to close the tabs – the days of manually pulling storefront data are officially over thanks to our new Amazon storefront integration”, says Samir El-Sabini, CEO & Co-founder, Juni. “During challenging economic periods, it's more important than ever for e-commerce businesses to have a clear, real-time view of their finances and our platform provides that. With a complete overview of their stores, ad networks, payment gateways and bank accounts in one place,  this integration is another significant step for our customers to simplify their financial oversight - allowing them to concentrate on scaling their businesses, and leaving the admin to us.”

“We know that businesses that operate in digital commerce have multiple storefronts and our latest integration with Amazon, alongside our existing one with Shopify, gives them a complete multi-platform overview in one place, " says Shelley Havemann, Senior Director of Product, Juni. “In the coming months, we will deepen this integration by adding Amazon Ads to our platform, ensuring businesses have clear visibility of their media spend across multiple ad platforms such as Amazon, Google and Meta. This holistic financial overview is key for digital commerce players, so that they can make better financial decisions and better manage their cash position.”

The Juni platform now boasts over 2,400 integrations as it aims to remove financial and operational barriers for businesses in digital commerce.

Freedom Finance, one of the UK’s leading digital lending marketplaces and embedded finance providers, has appointed Nick Jones as Director of Freedom for Intermediaries.

In his new role, Nick will lead the growth and development of Freedom Finance’s intermediated division through its Freedom for Intermediaries offering, a service dedicated to intermediaries who are looking to support their clients with specialist lending requirements.

Nick joins Freedom Finance from West One Loans, a specialist mortgage and property finance company, where he was Sales Director. He has significant experience in helping intermediaries serve their clients in the mortgage sector, having held senior positions at Roma Finance and Together.

In the face of a rapidly changing credit market, Freedom is investing to increase its capacity to serve intermediaries helping their clients find the right financing products.

As high street banks see new lending volumes constrained, Freedom is committed to increasing access to and awareness of secured and specialist lending options. Strong demand was seen in the second charge mortgage market in 2022, as the number of loans written in the 12 months to January 2023 were 37% higher than the previous year¹.

Freedom Finance helps millions of customers find the best secured and unsecured credit products available to them through its proprietary matching marketplace. Its intermediary offering – Freedom for Intermediaries - provides market-leading search technology, industry knowledge and a wide lending panel to mortgage brokers to help them find the right finance solutions for their clients. 

Nick Jones, Director of Freedom for Intermediaries at Freedom Finance, commented: “It is an exciting time to be joining Freedom Finance, a business that combines industry-leading technology and data with a team that really understands financial intermediaries and their clients.

“Secured credit is playing an increasingly important role in consumer finance in the UK and I look forward to working with Andrew and the team at Freedom to develop a wide-ranging specialist lending service.”

Andrew Fisher, Chief Growth Officer at Freedom Finance, said: “I am delighted to welcome Nick to Freedom Finance, he brings a wealth of property finance experience to the team. Nick’s valuable lender-side perspective will help us build a market-leading specialist lending distribution service.”

Today, leading payment orchestration provider BR-DGE has revealed new research highlighting the changing payment needs of consumers when shopping for goods online.
 
New UK consumer survey research has shown the importance of online retailers upgrading their payment security, with 34% of shoppers ranking data security and payment encryption as the most important element of a positive online payment experience. The survey of over 1,200 consumers, conducted on behalf of BR-DGE, highlighted the need for better security infrastructure to put them at ease when making payments. 83% of respondents said that they are concerned about how their card details are being processed and stored during transactions.
 
Demand for frictionless experiences
 
In addition to calls for greater security at the checkout, two-thirds of online shoppers (68%) are demanding a frictionless payment experience, noting that a poor experience at the checkout causes a negative impact on their willingness to buy online. A majority (52%) also stated that being taken away from the checkout screen for authentication may impact them going through with the transaction.
 
Furthermore, the research showed that avoiding failed transactions should be a priority for retailers, as 1 in 5 consumers (21%) claim failed transactions make them feel less confident in the seller. Nearly a quarter of shoppers (23%) also claimed that failed transactions reduce their confidence in the checkout itself.
 
With over 300 payment providers and technology solutions, BR-DGE’s platform works to reduce failed payments, combat fraud and wider consumer concerns by offering retailers a universe of payment options via a single point of integration. Retailers can easily upgrade their payment stack and bring themselves up to speed with modern consumer payment expectations in order to deliver a first-class payment experience, underpinned by the latest in anti-fraud technology.
 
Investing in payments infrastructure
 
Payment modernisation is more important than ever before for retailers, with the research revealing that 2 in 5 online shoppers (41%) spend online at least once every week. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) recently published data showing that 27p in every £1 being spent by shoppers was online, up from 19p in 20191. This research highlights the importance of online retailers investing in their payments infrastructure to ensure their systems are able to keep up with the changing payment needs of consumers and withstand periods of high transaction activity.

Mark Whybrow, Enterprise Sales Manager said “This research demonstrates how payments is becoming an increasingly important issue for consumers when they make purchases online. It is clear from the data that consumers are demanding more secure, frictionless payment experiences when shopping online with their favourite retailers. For retailers looking to increase their revenue from online channels, it is vital that they consider how they can adapt their checkout technology and payment journey to meet consumer needs.
 
“For e-commerce firms, this research highlights the opportunity to improve the customer experience of payments and reduce failed transactions by optimising their payments infrastructure.

As consumer budgets tighten, the importance of offering a first-class end-to-end payment experience is even more important in order to build customer loyalty. At BR-DGE, we are excited to continue to support sellers that want to stay ahead of the pack and remove the pain points in the customer journey.”

Tenity, the global innovation ecosystem and early-stage investor creating the future of finance, today announces the first closing of its Tenity Incubation Fund I, with investments from SIX Group, UBS’s strategic venture and innovation unit, UBS Next, Julius Baer, and Generali’s House of InsurTech Switzerland. The first closing will bring Tenity’s assets under advisory to 120mCHF.

The Tenity Incubation Fund I will invest in fintech & insurtech companies at angel, pre-seed and seed stage, emerging from the Tenity Flagship Incubation programs across its hubs in Europe and Asia. The fund targets to be the first institutional investor in a startup, supplying the team with funding, hands-on support and network throughout the four-month Tenity incubation program to accelerate business growth on a larger scale. The sweet spot are founders, who are at idea stage or product development but pre-market and have not raised yet or only a small family round.

For its LPs, the fund will deliver both strategic and financial return on investment. Tenity will build a supersized portfolio and broad market coverage of several hundred companies, covering all subsegments of fintech and insurtech. It poses a unique opportunity for investors to participate in early-stage innovations with high potential impact for the financial industry.

The Tenity startup programs have supported more than 250 startups to date, with alumni raising significant funding from stellar investors, such as Yokoy’s USD80M Series B from Sequoia, Keyrock’s USD72M Series B led by Ripple, Stableton’s CHF15M Series A led by TX Ventures, CoverGo’s USD15M Series A led by SemperVirens VC, or Oper’s EUR11M Series A led by ABN Amro Ventures.

Maximilian Spelmeyer, Chief Investment Officer at Tenity (previously F10), elaborates "We support founders over several months throughout the incubation program and use our experience to give them the tools and connections to succeed. With continued commitment from our partners, this year we enhance the Tenity offering through investment, on top of providing access to network and business expertise, introductions to corporate partners, a selection of mentors and our investor network. Combined, these factors provide a fertile ground for companies to perfect their product, master go-to-market strategy, and increase their chance of future success.”

With investments from leading global wealth manager UBS, the financial infrastructure SIX, wealth manager Julius Baer, and insurer Generali Switzerland, the fund is set to create tangible impact for innovation in the financial industry, and looking at a second closing in Q4 2023.

The Tenity Incubation Fund brings together a multidisciplinary team of investment and venture-building experts with a common vision to create the future of finance. Led by CIO Maximilian Spelmeyer, the Tenity investment team looks to build a portfolio of around 400 companies across Switzerland, Western Europe and Asia-Pacific. The team brings vast experience in the financial sector, and currently holds the advisory mandate for SIX Fintech Ventures, the CVC of SIX Group, with portfolio companies like Yokoy, Keyrock or Doconomy, Tenity Investment AG and the Tenity Global Asset balance sheet portfolio.

PaymentComponents, a leading provider of financial solutions, has announced the addition of BAHTNET (Bank of Thailand Automated High-value Transfer Network) to its FINaplo Financial Messages.

BAHTNET is a critical financial infrastructure that serves Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) of large value funds transfer between financial institutions or other organizations maintaining deposit accounts at the Bank of Thailand (BOT). With the addition of BAHTNET, FINaplo now supports most of the financial messaging standards, enabling banks and financial institutions to connect to various payment systems around the world.

This new addition will help financial institutions in Thailand streamline their payment operations, reduce operational costs, and improve efficiency. The FINaplo library for BAHTNET supports both inbound and outbound messages and includes features such as message validation, parsing, and routing.

The addition of BAHTNET to the FINaplo financial messaging libraries comes as an enhancement to our existing libraries, which include the ISO20022 payment schemes of MEPS+, FedNow, P27, and SIC/euroSIC among others. With a focus on innovation, Payment Components continues to invest in its product offerings, enabling its customers to keep pace with the changing landscape of global payments.

Simpl, India’s foremost one-tap checkout platform, today announced its partnership with Klub, a leading Revenue Based Finance company, to provide easy access to credit for the Direct-to-Customer (D2C) merchants and support them in meeting their working capital requirements. This partnership will enable credit access to merchants at affordable interest rates with flexible terms in a complete digital fashion.

Simpl aims to tackle a significant challenge faced by D2C merchants experiencing hyper-growth by including capital-as-a-service in its booster package for partner merchants. This initiative will enable long-term value creation and help resolve a major pain point for many digitally native companies in India. With this partnership, Simpl is also expanding its ‘Booster Package’ which provides exclusive access to services from various D2C enablers such as brand building, credit access, digital marketing and e-commerce consulting that helps boost business. These initiatives are aimed at creating a trusted ecosystem of D2C merchants that offer their customers high-quality products and a seamless payment experience.

According to the “Beyond E-commerce 3.0” report by Kalaari Capital, at least 50 million new users have been added to the Indian e-commerce platforms over the last two years as a result of the pandemic's rapid digitisation. Along with this, India is anticipated to have 1.1 billion internet users by 2025, with 30% of them engaging in online shopping. This opens up a huge opportunity for D2C merchants that are expected to generate $50 billion in sales by 2025 and therefore, becomes imperative to support them on multiple fronts including credit access, discoverability and seamless payments and Simpl aims to be at the forefront of enabling this change.

Commenting on the partnership, Nitya Sharma, Co-founder and CEO of Simpl said, "As an organisation committed to developing the D2C merchant ecosystem in India, we are constantly striving to come up with innovative ways to solve the problem statements faced by the community. In this endeavour, we are delighted to announce the expansion of our Booster Package to provide credit access to the D2C community in partnership with Klub to support them in their working capital requirements. This is in continuation of our efforts to boost the D2C ecosystem in India and emerge as a preferred partner for the fast-growing community in establishing their businesses”.  

“At Klub, we’re revolutionising the way platforms offer financing to their merchants. Our innovative embedded capital product is a plug ‘n play lending solution that seamlessly integrates with our partners’ platforms. We are excited to partner Simpl in offering quick and flexible financing options to its growing community of D2C merchants to support them in meeting their growing business requirements. And with a range of capital partners to choose from, including banks, NBFCs, and our own credit fund, we ensure that merchants get the best possible financing solutions. We’re excited to be at the forefront of this change and to empower platforms to unlock the full potential of their merchant ecosystems,” said Anurakt Jain, Co-founder and CEO at Klub. As part of its efforts to support the D2C ecosystem, Klub aims to disburse loans worth Rs 200 crore over the next six months to small businesses across the country.

The D2C ecosystem in India is witnessing rapid growth due to the growing affinity of merchants towards building a unique customer experience, growing beyond the e-commerce marketplaces to have market access and build a direct relationship with the end customers. To enable this, the creation of an entire digital value chain including payment infrastructure becomes important to offer a seamless experience to millions of customers.

Lyfeguard, a life planning assistant and document management platform, has appointed Associate Experience Design Director at Beyond, Gavin Borthwick, to its advisory board to lead digital customer and user experience.

Borthwick, Associate Experience Design Director for Beyond, delivers digital design strategies to enhance user experience for customers, and has successfully launched digital transformation campaigns for global companies including Google, the BBC and Just Eat.

With experience leading digital product transformations at other award-winning agencies including Foolproof and Brand42, Borthwick will assist Lyfeguard in developing its technology adoption and implementation to improve the digital experience of its customers.

Gavin Borthwick, Associate Experience Design Director at Beyond and Advisory Board Member for Lyfeguard, said: “We live in a world driven by customer demand and engagement, so it is essential that digital experiences are developed to match that. Lyfeguard’s innovative platform, delivered both online and through its app, is the focal point for IFA’s and customers and I am looking forward to supporting the development of these digital services to ensure a seamless customer and user experience for clients.”

Borthwick joins Lyfeguard’s advisory board alongside six other industry veterans, including: Jack Smith, CEO of IAG Loyalty Retail; Ronel David, Strategic Sales and DE&I Leader at FIS; Jonathan Lloyd White, CISO at Natura &Co.; Lee Mabey, Managing Partner at dentsu International; Lukman Abdul-karim, Principal Consultant at Agilisys; John Garden, VP Freight & Logistics at Mastercard.

Fraser Stewart, Chief Operating Officer for Lyfeguard, said: “We are excited to introduce our advisory board comprising of industry leaders at the top of their fields to help take Lyfeguard to the next level, improving our offering to help consumers and IFAs alike. With the guidance of our carefully selected seven industry veterans, we are confident in our ability to lead the go-to-market strategy and ensure seamless delivering of our services to clients. We firmly believe that everyone deserves peace of mind when it comes to managing life’s essential tasks, and our advisory board’s expertise will help us achieve this goal. We are excited to embark on this new journey with our partners on board and look forward to delivering exceptional services to our clients.”

Lyfeguard was founded by father-son team Gary and Fraser Stewart to revolutionise financial management and life planning to help people keep on top of their important documents, bills and life matters, as well as address a lack of planning for end-of-life.

Linedata, a global provider of credit and asset management technology, data and services, announces today the expansion of its Lending and Leasing activities in Southern Europe with the acquisition of Audaxys in Portugal. Through this project, Linedata confirms its ambitions in a region with strong growth potential.

Portugal has gradually established itself as a major hub for the world's leading technology companies. Thanks to the quality of its universities, recognized for their excellence in the fields of finance, industrial engineering and technology, the country is today a source of talent renowned on the international scene, both by start-ups and major players.

As a major player in the global credit and finance market, this acquisition reaffirms Linedata's commitment to expanding in Southern Europe throughout the Iberian region. Linedata's cutting-edge solutions will enable companies seeking technological excellence and innovation to rely on a trusted partner.

"The acquisition of Audaxys consolidates our position in Portugal, a territory of the future, open to the world and destined to be one of the key drivers of technological innovation globally, particularly in the financial sector, an industry of major local importance," commented Jamil Jiva, Global Head of Business Development at Linedata. "Its connections with the countries of the Portuguese-speaking world, particularly Brazil via the Portugal 2030 programme, make it a key business location in Europe. As we did in Riga a few years ago for the asset management business, our ambition is to develop a centre of excellence in Portugal dedicated to the credit business, based on the know-how of local teams."

"I am delighted by our merger with Linedata, a partner of international renown who shares our human values of caring employees and clients. This alliance offers Audaxys and his teams new development perspectives in the credit business, as well as an even wider range of products and services to meet our clients' needs. We are ready to face tomorrow's challenges together with confidence and determination," added Miguel Rangel, Chairman and CEO of Audaxys.

Allfunds Tech Solutions, the bespoke digital solutions arm of Allfunds specialising in harnessing the power of digital transformation for clients across the financial services industry, today announces a new partnership with UniCredit, the pan-European commercial bank.
 
The partnership will leverage Allfunds Tech Solutions digital capabilities to facilitate UniCredit’s transformation programme to further streamline its systems that support market and content data providers to the creation of a multi-asset platform to service UniCredit’s client base. 
 
Allfunds Tech Solutions will provide an omnichannel solution, by implementing a robust and flexible multi-layer foundation that begins in a bespoke middleware and achieves customized client portals, which to begin will service a minimum of 21,000 professional and 500,000 non-professional clients across Italy, Germany, and Austria. The digital investment platform will offer a consistent data universe with extensive and flexible adaptability, enabling UniCredit to optimize costs in technology and resources, market data, and exchange fees.  It is the first step, in a multi-phase project that will eventually roll-out on 13 platforms across Europe marking a transformation into a true global wealth data platform.
 
Allfunds Tech Solutions will provide advanced technologies in a cloud-based SaaS model with disaster recovery and 24/7 support embedded. In order to be prepared for future demands, Allfunds Tech Solutions will also improve efficiency in adding new countries, channels, segments and business requirements, reducing time to market.

Juan de Palacios, Chief Strategy & Product Officer, Allfunds, said: “Data and supporting infrastructure are more important than ever, as firms continue to enhance efficiency and optimize costs. We launched Allfunds Tech Solutions in 2022 as part of our Digital business, to provide solutions for the increasingly complex needs of the investments industry. We are proud to offer advanced technologies to help UniCredit further streamline its systems and create a global digital platform to better serve its clients.”